Mandela could be discharged from hospital to recuperate at home, former president says

By
JASON STRAZIUSO
Associated Press

July 14, 2013 — 10:45am

Ben Curtis, ASSOCIATED PRESS - APMembers of the Toronto Children's Chorus, who are on a tour taking, hugged each other as they observe some of the get-well messages and flowers outside the Mediclinic Heart Hospital where former South African President Nelson Mandela is being treated in Pretoria, South Africa Saturday, July 13, 2013.

JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela may be discharged from hospital soon to recuperate at home, said a former president of South Africa.

The prediction about Mandela leaving the hospital was made by Thabo Mbeki as he gave a memorial lecture for the African National Congress Saturday, reported the South African radio news service Eyewitness News.

Mandela has been hospitalized for more than five weeks for a recurring lung infection, sparking an outpouring of support in South Africa and internationally. Friends who have visited him say he is on life support in the form of mechanical ventilation.

The most recent official update on his health said Mandela was in critical but stable condition. But both Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, and President Jacob Zuma have said recently that Mandela is responding to treatment.

The anti-apartheid hero spent 27 years in prison before becoming South Africa's first black president in 1994. He turns 95 on Thursday.

Mbeki was Mandela's key deputy and succeeded him as South Africa's president in 1999.

A van veered onto a promenade and barreled down the busy walkway in central Barcelona on Thursday, mowing down pedestrians in a bloody killing zone. Thirteen people were killed and 100 were injured, 15 of them seriously, in what authorities called a terror attack.

Venezuela's high court issued an arrest order for the ousted chief prosecutor's husband Thursday after authorities accused him of running a $6 million extortion ring, a ruling promptly denounced by government critics as a move aimed at silencing opponents of President Nicolas Maduro.